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In a broad survey this issue of Current African Issues presents a multifaceted picture of the current state of the African economy. After a period of falling per capita incomes that started in the 1970s, Africa finally saw a turnaround from about 1995. The last few years have seen average per capita incomes in Africa grow by above 3 per cent per year on average, partly due to the resource boom but also due to improved economic policies. Africa receives more aid per capita than any other major region in the world and there is a significantly positive effect of aid on growth. One of the most notable aspects of the current process of globalisation is the increase in trade between Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia, particularly China and India. The authors conclude with a call for policy coherence among donors. The politically most problematic areas for policy change of those discussed in the paper are not aid policy but trade policy and the European Union CAP (Common Agricultural Policy). This is a challenge to EU policy makers, since the latter areas are probably the most important to change if we take our commitment to development seriously. CONTENTS -- Comparative performance of the African economy -- Financial flows to Africa -- The Asian drivers -- Impact of debt reduction initiatives -- Opportunities and constraints for growth -- Impacts of HIV/AIDS -- Gender and economic growth -- Brain drain -- Trade policy reform and African development -- Economics actors in a risky environment

African smallholder family farming, the backbone of the continental economy throughout the colonial and early post-colonial period, has been destabilized and eroded over the past thirty years. Despite the World Bank’s poverty alleviation concerns, agrarian livelihoods continue to unravel under the impact of economic liberalization and global value chains. Can African smallholders bounce back and compete? The World Development Report 2008 argues they can and must. How realistic is this given the history of World Bank conditionality in Africa? This essay explores the productivity and welfare concerns of Africa’s smallholder farming population in the shadow of the World Bank. CONTENTS -- World Bank Policy and the WDR 2008 -- African Development Policies over the Last 25 Years Land Rights, Markets and Capital -- Institutional Supports for African Smallholder Agriculture -- African Rural Agency in Response to Global Market Pressures -- Reading Between the Lines of the WDR 2008: African Smallholders’ Rural Future

This report summarises the results of the fourth and final round of interviews carried out among informal sector women traders in Harare, Zimbabwe as part of a longitudinal study of their conditions of work and livelihood in the context of economic crisis and structural adjustment. The evidence which was available from the interview points to a deepening social crisis in Zimbabwe as attested to by the increasing crisis of subsistence and livelihood among the overwhelming majorette of the informal sector workers. Far from being the terrain where sections of the populace might be able to find economic liberation, the informal sector is, in fact characterised by serious internal differentiation, very low incomes, and an over-saturation that results in the inability of the women survey to do anything other than struggle at the margins for basic survival.

In spite of serious external shocks and political destabilisation in part of the country, Uganda has remained a good economic performer since the late 1980s, with over a decade of high per capita growth in excess of three per cent. This study concludes that Uganda's medium to long-term success will depend on the achievements in institutional reforms, including raising the quality of the civil service, curbing corruption and implementing an effective regulatory framework. This is important as a poorly functioning public sector is both unable to uphold the rule of law, thus losing the public goodwill necessary for implementing new measures, and a burden on the private sector as it implies increased transaction costs. There is a widespread domestic and international concern that the civil strife in the Great Lakes Region might lead Uganda and its neighbours from the path of economic reform back to socio-economic instability.

This study attempts to capture the transformations in ethnic minority identity politics in the oil-producing areas of the Niger delta. In doing this, attention is simultaneously drawn to the factors informing the shift from peaceful agitation to violent protest as well as the dynamic of decay and renewal in the various ethnic minority movements that are active in the delta. It is suggested that part of the solution to the crisis in the delta will involve not only a thorough-going restructuring of the Nigerian state but also the re-orientation of the mode of operation of the giant oil multinationals in order to make them both more sensitive and accountable to the local communities. CONTENTS -- Contending Perspectives on Oil Minorities -- Ethnicity, Ethnic Identity and Ethnic Minorities in the Niger Delta: Some Conceptual Issues.-- Oil Minorities Identity Politics: A Historical Perspective -- From Independence to the Outbreak of the Civil War -- The Nigerian Civil War and the Aftermath: The Changing Fortunes of the Oil Minorities of the Niger Delta -- Economic Crisis, Structural Adjustment and the Changing Forms of Identity Politics of the Oil Minorities of the Niger Delta -- Structural Adjustment Programme in Nigeria: Theoretical Foundations -- The Impact of Structural Adjustment on Nigeria -- Ethnic Identity Politics under Structural Adjustment -- The Changing Global and Domestic Environment -- Oil Minorities Movements of the Niger Delta: Patterns of Continuity and Transformation -- New Trends, New Contradictions in the Delta: Identity as National LiberationThe Globalisation of Local Struggles in the Niger Delta (1991-1999)Decay and Renewal in the Oil Minorities Movements of the Niger DeltaTrajectories of Ethnic Minority Politics in the Niger Delta: Implications for the Nation-State Project in NigeriaConcluding Remarks: Niger Delta Oil Minorities Movement and the Future of Nigeria

The title of this report is inspired by the great Danish author Hans Christian Andersen who in the child's tale "Den Grimme Ælling" ("The Ugly Duckling") tells the story of a particularly ugly duckling. She is so ugly, in fact, that she is despised and disliked by all other ducks and ducklings. After a long and painful period of time, however, she grows up - but not to become an ugly duck. Instead she becomes a beautiful white swan, admired by all. So Andersen's tale has a happy ending-at least as far as the ugly duckling goes. The major question tackled in this report is whether a similar fate is awaiting Tanzania. Having been something of an enfant terrible since the deep crisis in the early 1980s, economic progress since 1995 provides some hope that the duckling period is Tanzania is finally over. The study initially emerged as part of the "Emerging Africa" research program launched by the OECD's Development Centre in 1997. Comments from participants in that research program are gratefully acknowledged, particularly Jean-Claude Berthélemy (project leader), Aristomene Varoudakis and Ludvig Söderlind. Jean Bonvin, President of the Development Centre (until spring, 1999) guided the project from the start. The project was financed by generous grants from the governments of Switzerland and Belgium. CONTENTS -- An overview of long-run economic performance and political developments -- Macroeconomic Policies to promote stability -- Structural Policies to promote long-run growth -- Public sector management and economic performance

This report examines the role of economic liberalisation in the reconstruction of the political economy of Zimbabwe's land question. Since the Economic Structural Adjustment Programme (ESAP) was introduced in 1990, the universe of policies surrounding and influencing the nature and scale of land reform has been changing in tandem with changing and varied supply responses to ESAP-related policy incentives within Zimbabwe's bi-modal agrarian structure. These responses are manifested in emerging new land use patterns and production processes oriented towards global markets. The growth of new export oriented land uses are a key determinant of the changing land question through their salient influence on transforming the structural and technological parameters of land use and the exchange values of land, and, therefore, of land ownership. Unequal benefits from ESAP reforms, especially from new land uses, however, fuel the struggle for more land redistribution. Thus a major result of these land use shifts is the changing organisation of the politics of landholders and land seekers, especially in their relations to the state, reflecting renewed struggle among various constituencies for historical and normative land rights against those seeking to preserve existing land rights in the context of an increasingly market-based land policy framework. A case study approach focusing on horticulture, wildlife and ostrich land uses, their economic features and impacts, and their socio-political ramifications was pursued between 1995 and 1997. Detailed case data and experiences were garnered from Zimbabwe's Mashonaland provinces and numerous secondary sources from the macro to the farmer and household level. The study assesses the direction and scale of these new rural land uses in Zimbabwe's prime lands with particular emphasis on the 1990-1996 period. It traces the new forms of land use in relation to emerging land bidding and ownership structures/ social relations of production among large scale and small farmers, private agrarian market agents, and the state itself. The emergence of new forms of rural land and commodity markets, new trends in socio-political organisation and policy advocacy among farmers' groups and other interest groups, as well as the changing relationship of government agencies to the control and use of land and commodity production, were the main social processes and relations examined. Contents: 1. Zimbabwe’s new land question -- 2. Methodological framework and study area -- 3. Policy and institutional context -- 4. Changing land uses and the reconstruction of the land questionolitics and actors in new land struggles -- 6. Concluding remarks

This study investigates the gender implications of agricultural sector reform in Kenya. The author focuses on smallholder tea production with the aim of pinpointing the factors that influence the adoption of tea among male and female farmers assessing female farmers' perceptions of the changes in living standards over the research period, and suggesting appropriate policy reforms to ensure that women's interests are taken into account in the design of agricultural reforms.

This research report examines the ways in which medical professionals have responded to the changing environment of work and livelihood in Zimbabwe since the adoption of a structural adjustment programme. Of particular interest are those doctors and nurses who took a decision to migrate from Zimbabwe to Botswana and South Africa in search of "greener" pastures.

A "new regionalism" is gathering pace in West Africa, underpinned by the growing activities of informal cross-border traders. The authors of this study challenge the assumptions of the World Bank that the expansion in informal cross-border trade is a vindication of the market liberalising thrust of structural adjustment, and that adjustment policies have, in an organic manner, improved the effectiveness of an "independent" bourgeoisie that is emerging out of this trade as an agent of regional integration. Instead, they make the case for the adoption of what they call a "development approach" for tapping the benefits of the informal currency markets, as an alternative to the "market coercion" of structural adjustment. CONTENTS -- Introduction -- Theoretical and Methodological Issues -- The Historical Roots of Cross-Border Trade between Nigeria and Niger -- Commodity and Currency Relations in the Development of Cross-Border Trade -- Wapa and Financial Intermediation -- The Organization of the Cross-Border Commodity Trade and the Franc Zone Reforms -- By Way of Conclusion: Adjustment to Integration

The report highlights the long history of commodification of land and labour in Ghana, linked to speculative activites and more recently to the activities of international capital, agribusiness, international agricultural centres and agencies of the state. It makes the case for a new land, agrarian and natural resource regime that prioritises domestic economic needs to provide security of livelihood to the generality of the people.

This report is a contribution to the growing literature on the impact of structural adjustment on the manufacturing sector in Africa and it has the distinction of being one of the first longitudinal surveys assessing the experience of Zimbabwean manufacturers under the country's economic structural adjustment programme (ESAP) from 1990 to 1995. It documents the detailed experiences of selected textile and metal firms under ESAP and concludes that the adjustment framework has caused deindustrialization. ESAP also took a heavy toll on the living and working conditions of manufacturing sector workers. The report makes a strong case for the abandonment of the orthodox structural adjustment framework of industrial restructuring and the pursuit of an alternative approach that is more favourable to the local accumulation of capital. CONTENTS -- Chapter 1: The Manufacturing Sector in Zimbabwe: An Overview -- Chapter 2: Restructuring in the Textile and Metal Industries -- Chapter 3: Change and Conflict in Labour Relations -- Chapter 4: Income Patterns, Living Standard and Coping Strategies -- Chapter 5: Conclusion and Post-Script

The period since the early 1980s when the Nigerian economic crisis began in earnest has coincided with an increase in the incidence of ethnic conflicts in the country. Even the rural areas, previously regarded as spheres of ethnic harmony have not been able to escape the spread of violent inter-communal and inter-ethnic clashes.This report represent an attempt to understand the sources of ethnic tension in contemporary Nigeria. In doing so, the relationship between economic decline, structural adjustment and ethnic clashes is explored. The focus is on the problem of rural ethnicity, a much neglected dimension of ethnicity in Nigeria.

This report documents patterns of differentiation within the informal sector amidst the decline in working and living conditions associated with the structural adjustment programme, and shows that in the era of adjustment, the informal sector, far from being a site of accumulation, is a site of bare survival.

There has recently emerged a growing concern among scholars and policy makers to elaborate a connection between structural adjustment and governance in the Third World, due to a desire for market-driven economic reform in the adjusting countries. The governance is presented as the missing link for these economic reforms. This report challenges the intellectual premises of the governance project of the Bretton Woods twins in Africa. It argues that in the way in which it has been articulated, the World Bank/IMF governance reform agenda can hardly be expected to lay an enduring basis for a system of democratic governance in Africa. Nor can it be expected to create a framework for non-repressive economic reforms.

This report intervenes in the debate on the implications of structural adjustment for the social sector in Africa. It finds a strong association between structural adjustment implementation and a sharp deterioration both in the household economy and in the health status of the working poor in urban and rural Zimbabwe.

Nigeria, once a promising and resourceful country, is experiencing economic and political decay. This book highlights the remarkable progress wich has been achieved in spite of this decline. It follows Nigeria´s important textile industry from the heyday of the oilboom through successive phases of adjustment and liberalization. The fo-cus is on the trade unions and the book points to the successful institutionalization of a union-based labour regime. It draws on extensive field work, interviews with managers unionists, workers and massive documentation from internal union sources. Contents: 1. Trade unions and industrial adjustment -- 2. Crisis and adjustments in the textile industry -- 3. Bargaining and coping -- 4. Companies, cities and workers -- 5. Six company cases -- 6. Industrial structure, place and labour regime -- 7. The textile workers union -- 8. The progress of unionization -- 9. Resistance to unionization in Kano -- 10. Militancy and mediation -- 11. Union bureaucracy and the democratic processorkers against the union -- 13. Corporatism, self-organization and industrialization -- 14. Transition – a post-script

This report attempts to intervene in the discussion on the social effects of structural adjustment through an empirically-based assessment of the impact of the Economic Structural Adjustment Programme (ESAP) of the Zimbabwean state on the country's health sector. The author's conclude that ESAP has resulted in a serious degradation of the poor in Zimbabwe, and an overall decline in the health status of the working poor, which the Social Dimensions Fund has failed to mitigate.

The African-based authors of this volume provide a series of objective, detailed, factually up-to-date, and theoretically informed studies of reent developments in agriculture, the informal sector, the social sector and 'civil society' in Kenya, Lesotho, Tanzania and Zimbabwe. They analyse the main trends and forces operating in these fields and consider the economic reform programme's impact against this background. Contents: Structural Adjustment and Structural Change in Sub-Saharan Africa : Some Provisional Conclusion / Peter Gibbon -- Extending the Frontiers of Structural Adjustment Research in Africa : Some Notes on the Objectives of Phase 2 of the NAI Research Programme / Adebayo O. Olukoshi

It is generally agreed that the implementation of Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs) and the deep economic crisis which prefaced and continued to attend their adaptation in several African countries have had serious economic, social and political consequences. Against this background, this study examines the effect of SAP on ethnicity in Nigeria.

The mining sector has played an historically central role in the economy of Africa, but large-scale investment in it declined after 1970. Structural adjustment and the dismantling of apartheid opens up the possibility of a revival of such investment, but also raises questions about the terms on which it will take place and the fate of local small-scale mining industries. These two studies examine tensions between large- and small-scale mining in Tanzania, and the emergence of new forms of relation between international mining houses and the national state in Zimbabwe.

The people of Tanzania have been subjected to a development from above, often implemented by force by the colonial and post-colonial state and advocated by external donor agencies, the IMF and the World Bank. This has resulted in a state-dominated, externally dependent and undemocratic society. This book aims at documenting peasant's response to state intervention, built on a case study of Rufiji district in Tanzania. Contents: 1. Introduction -- PART 1: The Post-Colonial Model -- 2. The Emergence, Development and Breakdown of the Post-Colonial Model in Tanzania -- PART 2: State Intervention and Rural Production in Rufiji District -- 3. The History, Location and Features of Rufiji District -- 4. Physical Features and the Agricultural System -- 5. Non-Agricultural Production -- 6. Major Forms of State Intervention in Rural Production -- 7. Effects of State Intervention on Rural Production -- PART 3: Hydropower versus People: The Stiegler`s Gorge Project -- 8. State Intervention and Development Assistance; Evidence from the Stiegler´s Gorge Project -- PART 4: Structural Adjustment and Agricultural in Tanzania -- 9. Structural Adjustment and Agricultural since 1980